The PDB is intended to provide the president of the United States with new international intelligence warranting attention and analysis of sensitive international situations. The prototype of the PDB was termed the President's Intelligence Check List; the first was produced by CIA officer Richard Lehman at the direction of Huntington D. Sheldon on June 17, 1961.

Although the production and coordination of the PDB was a CIA responsibility, other members of the U.S. Intelligence Community reviewed articles (the "coordination" process) and were free to write and submit articles for inclusion.

While the name of the PDB implies exclusivity, it has historically been briefed to other high officials. The distribution list has varied over time, but has always or almost always included the Secretaries of State and Defense and the National Security Advisor. Rarely, special editions of the PDB have actually been "for the President's eyes only," with further dissemination of the information left to the President's discretion.

Production of the PDB is associated with that of another publication, historically known as the National Intelligence Daily, that includes many of the same items but is distributed considerably more widely than the PDB.

The PDB is an all-source intelligence product summarized from all collecting agencies.[3][4]The Washington Post noted that a leaked document indicated that the PRISMSIGAD (US-984) run by National Security Agency (NSA) is "the number one source of raw intelligence used for NSA analytic reports."[5] The PDB cited PRISM data as a source in 1,477 items in the 2012 calendar year.[6] Declassified documents show that as of January 2001 over 60% of material in the PDB was sourced from signals intelligence (SIGINT).[7] According to the National Security Archive, the percentage of SIGINT-sourced material has likely increased since then.[7]